Friend Finder
Helping students with visual impairments identify and locate their peers in a large classroom environment
Accessibility • Mobile Design
The Problem
Students with visual impairments faces challenges connecting with sighted peers, which limited their participation in the classroom.
Our challenge was to create inclusive solutions that foster a connected and collaborative classroom environment for both students with visual impairments and sighted students. This includes students with visual impairments who need tools to connect and collaborate with their peers, and sighted students who seek ways to engage with and support their classmates more effectively.
Final Solution
Friend Finder, Inclusive Classroom Navigation
We designed Friend Finder, an accessibility feature integrated into the Canvas Student mobile app. Once enabled, it allows students with low vision or blindness to create a personal list of classmates and quickly locate them. Students can navigate to their peers using screen-readable text or a visual classroom map, making large classroom environments more accessible and easier to navigate.
The Impact
An Essential Tool for Students with Visual Impairments
The solution made a meaningful impression on participants with visual impairments, who highlighted its ease of use and the way it addressed often-overlooked social aspects of campus life. Feedback also emphasized its potential to become an essential tool for these students, reinforcing the design’s value in promoting accessibility, inclusion, and broader impact.
Research & Insights
Creating Persona Based on Insights from User Interview
We started off with 1-1 interviews with two visually-impaired students at the University of Washington, complemented by extensive secondary research. This research aids us in pinpointing the project scope, refining the design problem, and developing a user persona articulating goals and needs to guide our design requirements.
Integrating the Friend Locator interface within Canvas app
The Friend Locator feature aims to enhance social connectivity on campus, and users have expressed a strong preference for integrating it into an existing campus app, Canvas, instead of requiring them to download a new, standalone application.
Design Question
How might we help UW students with visual impairment easily identify their classmates within large classroom environments?
Ideation
A creative and energetic brainstorming followed by a logical and collaborative screening process.
Key criterion we applied to the screening and iteration:
Visually-impaired student first: it is not an idea for all, our first priority is VI students’ pain points
Accessibility: the idea should be easy to learn and use for VI students
Feasibility: the idea should come with technical feasibility
Mid-fidelity Wireframes
Usability Testing
Social vs Academic Frustration
The biggest "aha moment" is that the majority of frustrations arise from the social aspect of campus life, particularly interactions with classmates. Despite advancements in technology that improve accessibility to learning resources, students with visual impairments still struggle with social inclusion in the classroom setting. This social dimension is crucial in shaping their overall learning experience.
Design System
WCAG-Compliant Design System for Inclusive Experiences
I created a design system to ensure the product is consistent, accessible, and scalable. Guided by WCAG standards, it defines core colors, typography, and reusable components that prioritize clarity and inclusivity. Colors are organized into functional roles—primary, secondary, background, and semantic states—with an additional course-specific palette for categorization. Typography follows a clear hierarchy designed for readability and flexibility on mobile. This system provides a shared foundation for designers and developers, enabling faster iteration, cohesive design, and long-term growth.
Reflection
Balancing inclusivity for all students
Implementing location-sharing features that are crucial for visually impaired students raised privacy and usage concerns for sighted students. Achieving this balance required careful design and iteration to ensure that all students felt included and respected.
I learned that designing the platform to facilitate interaction between users with visual impairment and sighted users, rather than isolating users with visual impairment within their own group, was essential. This approach prevented isolation and fostered a truly inclusive community, ensuring that all users benefit from an equitable experience.
Recruiting participants with visual impairments was challenging, and further steps would require extensive coordination with external organizations to improve usability testing reliability. Additionally, expanding the use case beyond classroom environments to include large events like career fairs and school festivities would further enhance the platform's inclusivity and usability.